Schools - Transactions

Free school meals Christmas holiday and Winter Support Fund payments

The Scottish Government announced a Winter Support Fund which includes a one-off payment of £100 per child before Christmas for low income families in receipt of free school meals.

A payment of £22.50 per child will also be made for the Christmas holiday Free School Meals payment.

Families in receipt of free school meals will receive a payment totalling £122.50 per child. The payment will be made to households on 14 December 2020 for each child that has been awarded Free School Meals by 30 November 2020.

Children in P1 to P3 receiving universal Free School Meal provision (i.e. who wouldn’t qualify for Free School Meals on the income-based entitlement) are not eligible for the payment.

Families who apply for Free School Meals after 30 November 2020 but before 23 December 2020, and are eligible on low income criteria, will also receive the £100 payment and the Christmas holiday Free School Meals payment of £22.50 per child.

Our webpage has been updated with this information.

Please note that parents are not required to complete a new application in order to receive these payments.

EMA application processing delays

The team continue to work hard to process applications as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately we have seen a significant increase in our workload due to Covid-19 as we support vulnerable customers across several areas and have had to direct our resource to meet work priorities and additional demands on the services we provide. One significant pressure on our team is the additional workload generated by processing the free school meal payments.

There can also be delays in processing applications if supporting evidence is not provided by parents at the time the application is completed.

The position is being constantly reviewed and additional resources are being put in place to help process the oldest applications. Its important to note that EMA awards are dependent on the date the application was made - so any application received up to and incuding 30 September will be eligible to receive payments backdated to the start of term - students will not lose out.

We are also aware of a delay to award notifications resulting in a number of students not receiving their learning agreement yet. Students receive an automated email with their award letter and learning agreement, and we have been working closely with the Intelligent Automation team to resolve the issues. We are hopeful that outstanding notifications will be completed over the weekend.

P1 and S1 placements

The online P1 registration form has been well received by both parents and school staff.  We are aware that some submissions may not have reached the school admin mailboxes due to the size of documents uploaded, and we are continuing to work to identify these and send these on to you.

We are also working through your Council Tax enquiries. Please note that every effort should be make to contact the parent to request their Council Tax bill before referring to us. Parents can register their Council Tax account online and download their bill, so this should be suggested in the first instance.  Please record the registration anyway (you can select 'other' under address proofs) and you can update the proofs later.

To udpate proofs on a registration, just search for the child name in the Intake Registration Details screen, then tick the new proof received and click on 'Update Proofs':

You can also do this if updating the RC Requirement and DOB Proof boxes.

When you fill in the Council Tax enquiry spreadsheet it would help us if you give us the child's name.

We are in the process of checking registration discrepancies - these are children who have not been matched to their existing nursery record and a duplicate enrolment is created. This causes issues at Turnaround so it is vital we sort these out now.

Discrepancies can be down to just one letter mis-spelled, or a date of birth entered incorrectly - often its the nursery record which is wrong!  It is important to always check if the parent has stated the child attends one of our early years settings.  Please note that if the nursery was not listed as it is a private non-partner nursery or one in another authority area, you will not find a current match, and in these cases you would be expected to create a new enrolment.

P7 address changes have been actioned and new letters are being issued to the parents next week.

Next update

This is the last blog post of 2020, so all that's left is to thank you all for your help with our processes in what has been a most challenging year.  We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year!